Can't clear eMMC on my Zero

#1

So I got a Zero for a project, shelved the project, but I have a new project that the Zero (with it’s USB 3, yay!) should be great for. However, I’m trying to convert it over to boot from mSD card, and so trying to flash the radxa-zero-erase-emmc.bin from https://wiki.radxa.com/Zero/dev/maskrom to clear the eMMC, which I believe will then make the currently installed uBoot simply boot from the mSD card.

However, I get this stack trace when I run boot-g12.py

  File "/root/./.local/bin/boot-g12.py", line 23, in <module>
    socid = dev.identify()
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/root/.local/share/pipx/venvs/pyamlboot/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyamlboot/pyamlboot.py", line 304, in identify
    ret = self.dev.ctrl_transfer(bmRequestType = 0xc0,
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/root/.local/share/pipx/venvs/pyamlboot/lib/python3.11/site-packages/usb/core.py", line 1082, in ctrl_transfer
    ret = self._ctx.backend.ctrl_transfer(
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/root/.local/share/pipx/venvs/pyamlboot/lib/python3.11/site-packages/usb/backend/libusb1.py", line 893, in ctrl_transfer
    ret = _check(self.lib.libusb_control_transfer(
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/root/.local/share/pipx/venvs/pyamlboot/lib/python3.11/site-packages/usb/backend/libusb1.py", line 602, in _check
    raise USBTimeoutError(_strerror(ret), ret, _libusb_errno[ret])
usb.core.USBTimeoutError: [Errno 110] Operation timed out

I’m running Debian Testing, and installed pyamlboot through pipx. At a guess, seems it can’t detect the board, but I see Bus 003 Device 015: ID 1b8e:c003 Amlogic, Inc. GX-CHIP from lsusb, and I get this in dmesg when I push the boot button and plug it in.

[484411.989264] usb 3-4.4.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1b8e, idProduct=c003, bcdDevice= 0.20
[484411.989273] usb 3-4.4.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[484411.989277] usb 3-4.4.3: Product: GX-CHIP
[484411.989281] usb 3-4.4.3: Manufacturer: Amlogic
#2

I have been overwriting the boot sectors of the emmc from within the booted os. I.e…
Boot from the OS you have installed on the emmc;

$ lsblk (for me emmc is mmcblk0)
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M count=1000 status=progress
$ sudo reboot now

Which results in no boot from the emmc. Then I put in the SD card and boot from it.
I am also downloading images directly to the booted SD card, then unzipping them and dd’ing the .img into the emmc from within the zero, remove the sd and boot to emmc again.

Hope that helps.